No girls left behind
History was made on Saturday 12th February 2022 as Ghana held its first-ever all-female esports competition dubbed ‘Girls in Gaming‘ (GiG) at the Esports Academy in Haatso.
The competition was set up by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Esports Academy, Maximus Ametorgoh, in partnership with Queens Esports, PopOut and the Esports Association, Ghana (EAG) to create an avenue for female gamers to showcase their abilities.
This was revealed by Maximus in an exclusive interview with EAN stating that although Esports Academy usually leaves their competitions open to all, they are mostly attended by male gamers with the occasional female gamer mixed in. So he wanted to create a space that allows female gamers to shine.
“Usually we organise tournaments for guys, the guys usually participate in most of the community events leaving out the girls,” the Esports Academy CEO said
“Some of the girls also dare to play with the guys because usually, the events are open to anybody who wants to play it’s not focused on the gender of the person. So this time around we wanted to organise something just for the girls to come and showcase their skills within their own cycles.”
And the ladies truly showcased their abilities, as the 19 female gamers at the event impressed drawing in crowds who got more and more passionate as the event wore on. The ladies participated in three competitive games at the GiG event including EA Sports’ FIFA22, SuperVillain Studios’ Frozen Free Fall: Snowball Fight and Candivore’s Match Masters for a prize pool of GH₵3000.
According to Maximus, the games picked for the event were done after serious consideration of the types of games normally played by women in the country, especially in the case of Frozen Free Fall and Match Masters which are puzzle games enjoyed by women in the country.
“Frozen [Free Fall] because you know the movie Frozen is more for children and there is a female touch to it so that’s how we come out with that concept and it is a puzzle game and a lot of the girls play puzzle and strategy games, and there is a huge community for the Match Masters to as well.”
Akosua Amoaba Asiedu shined at the event claiming victory in two events both of which were the match-three games Frozen Free Fall: Snowball Fight and Match Masters; beating out Isabella Akorfa Disu (2nd) and Gloria Tontoh (3rd) in Frozen and defeating Thelma Mensah-Woode (2nd) and Mimi Jiagge (3rd) in Match Masters.
However, the FIFA22 event – which was the main draw of the event – would see Monica Mensah Sefakor dominate scoring 19 goals in the group stages in the run-up to the finals where she would ease past Edwina Nana Bediako to be crowned the FIFA22 Queen.
